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DIMOCO, Juniper Research Present White Paper at Mobile World Congress

Bob JohnsonMar 3, 2015 8:00 AM PST

BARCELONA, Spain — Presenting a white paper on the future of carrier billing at the Mobile World Congress 2015, DIMOCO and Juniper Research reported that the European digital content market is expected to increase to 35.7 billion Euros by 2019.

Games and video will continue to be the most popular categories. And revenue from digital content billed via carrier billing is expected to rise to 9.8 billion in Europe in 2019.

The companies said that carrier billing will allow vendors to see 60 percent higher conversion rates for first time transactions, and 70 percent higher conversion rates for second transactions compared with credit card billing. They noted that 75 percent of European users prefer carrier billing if the payment option is available for digital content purchases.

While Windsor Holden, research director at Juniper Research, presented the latest digital content market data and the forecast for the coming years; DIMOCO heralded new carrier billing market trends and how vendors will profit from this enormous potential.

“Carrier billing is the number one payment method when it comes to billing digital content," DIMOCO CEO Gerald Tauchner said in his talk at the Congress.

Other highlights of the joint white paper said that the European digital content market is expected to increase from an estimated 23 billion Euros in 2014 to 35.7 billion in 2019. Games and videos will remain the most popular carrier billing content categories, generating combined sales of more than 5.3 billion Euros annually by 2019.

The report also said carrier billing will continue as an essential, additional payment method, and that carrier billing will be used on multiple-screens including mobile phones, tablets, desktop PCs and smart TVs, greatly expanding the scope and scale of potential revenue for all vendors.

In addition, carrier billing implementation is seeing higher conversion rates and transaction values: First-time conversion rates with carrier billing are 70 percent, compared to 10-12 percent with credit cards. The uplift is particularly pronounced for small value transactions (less than 10 Euros). For repeat purchases, the conversion rate with carrier billing was 80-88 percent, while with credit card billing it was 20-25 percent.

Carrier billing was also found to be the user-preferred payment option for billing digital content: 75 percent of European users prefer it if the payment option is available in digital content storefronts, the report found.

The value of digital content billed via carrier billing also showed an average annual growth of 41 percent over the forecast period.